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DMandPenfold writes "The UK government gave Chevron the go-ahead in September to drill in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, in spite of the US oil giant's admission that its contractor's spill prediction software constantly crashed and was not a reliable predictor of how far oil could travel if an accident took place. The news comes in a week that US investigations into BP's disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit the buffers, after an IT contractor firm refused to hand over access to its software."

You do know that Guy Fawkes was fighting to replace one monarchy with another? That his intention was not to get rid of Parliament but rather to kill Protestant Christians and replace them with Catholic Christians and maintain the political status quo (a group of rich, landed members of Parliament serving a monarch), just change England from Protestant to Catholic rule?

I think a lot of people cheer Guy Fawkes because they think he was standing up for democracy and overthrowing tyrannical states whereas I am pretty sure the situation was that he just wanted to overthrow one religious authority with another. He wanted the same political system (monarch served by ineffectual unrepresentative MPs) just a different religious flavour.

His goal was to replace King James the first of England (and sixth of Scotland) with his nine year old daughter princess Elizabeth.

IMHO.... Guy-Fawkes-Anonymous guys should get smart, read, and analyze what they're getting into. Bombing parliament-type strategies might have been considered standard revolution practice when Fawkes was around (and make great movie scripts), but now it seems pretty widely considered counterproductive and obsolete. It seems that real wars now take place at the level of espionage, corruption, media manipulation, and legal-political cheating. Which is why WikiLeaks is effective. Violence is still widely use

People like Fawkes because he tried to blow a lot of shit up. That's it, that's all the appeal.

There is no appeal to reason or intelligence with who Fawkes was or what he stood for, there's no ideological affinity. People get angry at government, for valid and invalid reasons, and fantasies of just blowing all of it to kingdom come makes Fawkes a folk hero in that way, and that way only. All people know is that he tried to bomb the whole government, that's good enough for them.

torture the dummy on a rack and with manacles, draw the dummy behind a horse on the ground, hang it, resuscitate it shortly before dying, get it up on a ladder (as not deserving of heaven or earth), cut off its genitals and burn them in front of the dummy's eyes to see, disembowel the dummy, cut out its heart, decapitate it, cut it into four pieces, then distribute the four pieces to the four corners of the kingdom to display in the air as a warning, and make sure the

I think it's mostly because fire is cool and everyone can relate to wanting to blow up Parliament from time to time. Since they're not actually going to do it and (usually) don't actually want it done, the analysis stops there.

Penguin 1: what’s all that black shit?
Penguin 2: I honestly don’t have a fucken clue
Wildlife observer 1: did some oil company just make another huge fuckup
Wildlife Observer 2: time to pack the gear and head home before the penguins get pissed

Oil deposits in the North sea have been propping up the British economy for decades now. While the UK is facing a big deficit, and getting stung by other economies in the Eurozone looking wobbly, they'd probably overlook a few things to get their hands on the money. -So much for a 'greener' coalition!

Oil deposits in the North sea have been propping up the British economy for decades now.

which has rather annoyed the Scots themselves who have the odd situation where the Scots have elected a nationalist government [snp.org] (who support an independent-from-the-uk scotland) but cannot get independence itself because the English vote is 9 times the size of the Scottish vote. The UK won't let Scotland go because of the oil revenue but since the 1980's Thatcher government has moved as many national assets as it can out of Scotland, e.g. in the last 20 years (coinciding with the rise in strength in indepen

Erm....stalls? The unionist parties are the ones blocking it. The SNP are a minority government and when all the unionist parties (including the two how are for holding a referendum on the voting system in the UK and are in government) said they would not back it as it was the wrong time for a referendum, so there was no way the bill would pass.
For some reason the unionist parties are hell bent on not having a referendum that they keep saying they will win easily. Kinda makes you wonder just how accurate

The SNP administration stalls "seeking a referendum" because it knows it would lose any vote on an enabling bill in Parliament (because it's a minority, as you said), and (more importantly) they know that they don't have the power to bring such a bill forward, as it's outside the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament to enact legislation relating to independence (Scotland Act 1998 [legislation.gov.uk], s 29(2)(b), and Schedule 5 para 1(b), and also Hansard [millbanksystems.com], Lord Sewel at column 854)).

It's not a curious choice of words to use "propping up" in reference to a non-renewable, non-human-made, finite resource a country just happens to be sitting on. The UAE government will tell you all about that.

That's a reasonably valid point. Certainly true of the UK and many other countries as well. We all seem to be using up our mineral reserves at terrific rates.

I often despair that the UK doesn't invest in renewable energy research and development more, seeing as it is a windy set of islands on the edge of a huge ocean. Lots of challenges but potentially huge amounts of renewable energy always going to be available, waves rolling in from thousands of miles and fairly blowy at times too.

Yes but this concept that "humanity will perish" or "national security will collapse" or "the economy will collapse" if oil just disappeared is pretty pathetic, but apparently effective for the many people who grew up hearing about the rapture, the apocalypse and all that. Humanity has overcome quite a few much greater challenges. Replacing oil power will not exactly be the end of civilization.

Yes but this concept that "humanity will perish" or "national security will collapse" or "the economy will collapse" if oil just disappeared is pretty pathetic, but apparently effective for the many people who grew up hearing about the rapture, the apocalypse and all that. Humanity has overcome quite a few much greater challenges. Replacing oil power will not exactly be the end of civilization.
You're right end of oil power will not be the end of civilization, assuming you live in the tropics, near where y

It's pretty clear that any obstacle to oil drilling anywhere just means it costs more money. The bribes paid to officials to allow it are small compared to the $BILLIONS it costs to do the rest, and of course much smaller than the many $BILLIONS the well produces.

Even when the damage done by the drilling can't be repaired with money. And even when the money spent on getting the drilling done is not spent on the people (or other living things) damaged by it.

People have been drilling in deep water in the North Sea for decades, with admittedly a couple of nasty accidents [wikipedia.org], but so far things have gone pretty well. And do you know what? No-one had oil spill prediction software when they started. They relied on the skill and experience of the people operating the rigs.

Bear in mind that this is the UK, where we have far, far tighter safety regulations than the US for the oil industry. We know what we're doing. Oil companies in the US clearly don't, or don't care to do it properly.

BP stands for "Beyond Petroleum" it ceased to be British Petrolem in 2001 shortly after it meged with Amaco and ate a smorgasboard of other smaller companies. It's global headquarters are in London but it is listed on both the LSE and the NYSE.

Besides the GP was comparing the regulatory regimes of the two countries. If the US chooses to implement a regulatory regime comprable to Nigeria then they can expect similar enviromental results.

"An explosion and resulting fire destroyed it on July 6, 1988, killing 167 men, with only 59 survivors. The death toll includes two crewmen of a rescue vessel. Total insured loss was about £1.7 billion (US$ 3.4 billion). At the time of the disaster the platform accounted for approximately ten percent of North Sea oil and gas production, and was the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and industry impact."

"People were still getting off the platform several hours after the initial fires and explosions. The main problem was that most of the personnel who had the authority to order evacuation had been killed when the first explosion destroyed the control room. This was a consequence of the platform design, including the absence of blast walls. Another contributing factor was that the nearby connected platforms Tartan and Claymore continued to pump gas and oil to Piper Alpha until its pipeline ruptured in the heat in the second explosion. Their operations crews did not believe they had authority to shut off production, even though they could see that Piper Alpha was burning."

Shit is blowing up and burning around you...and you do nothing because you don't believe you have the authority to do anything (at least, anything significant)?

One hell of a corporate indoctrination seminar that had to be. I'm sorry, but if it were me, shit were blowing up, flaming out, people getting killed, it really wouldn't matter to me who had told me I couldn't do X, Y, and/or Z, if X, Y, and/or Z could at least prevent things from going from worse to OMFG (and provided I had the ability to do those things--else I'd be all 'see ya later bye'). When it's life and limb, only the guy with a uniform, badge, and gun is in charge.

And just how exactly is Joe Grunt Sixpack supposed to know that shutting off valve #3983 on a control panel full of other valves, controls and switches, is going to have a positive effect on the flaming inferno on the next platform?

Not to mention, in these days of litigation-happy and point-your-finger gotta-blame-somebody corporate culture, do you want to be the one to find out?

Sorry, just isn't going to happen. You can't have a solid set of contingency plans when your original design is full of flaws. Esp

I'd add that when he/she says ESD is tested at least annually the test includes testing every single io-point in the whole ESD system.

In addition to the ESD system there is a PSD system which shuts down valves, motors, heaters and the likes if they enter dangerous levels. If this doesnt stop the issue and it reaches higher alarm levels ESD trips happen.

Having implemented controller logic at a major north sea installation I know a bit of what goes on and how things are tested...

Since Piper Alpha, among the dozens of mandatory safety improvements designed to prevent such a catastrophe from ever unfolding to the state it can attain (total destruction/gas fire/melted steel) is the addition of the Station Bill.

Advice is, to read it so you know what to do in an emergency, usually showing the rig outline with lifeboats etc. Of course, nobody does so it's on the back of all the toilet stall doors.

There were emergency evacuation plans in place. These were put in place because people had sat down in a calm setting and worked out the best ways to get everyone safely off the platform. There are temporary refuges on (most) platforms. These are designed to keep you safe from the fires/explosions for at least an hour. When it looks like the fires are serious enough that you have to get right off the platform there are more plans that will get everyone off safely - everyone jumping off the side usually lead

What is significant? All people on your tiny isolated platform with authority are dead, the only ones left are the working plebs. What can you do that is significant other than fucking run and dive over the edge.

You can get to an escape raft and hope that 50 other people came too.
You can get to an escape raft and launch it by yourself potentially killing 50 other people.
You can jump over the edge of an oil platform from a height of which will likely cause you to break your legs when you hit the water.

People have been drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for decades, with admittedly a couple of nasty accidents but so far things have gone pretty well. And do you know what? No-one had oil spill prediction software when they started. They relied on the skill and experience of the people operating the rigs.
How reasonable does it sound now?

or hiring from tech school that have classes that are more tech and less G.E / Introduction to the Internet for filler or wait some schools make you take stuff like art history and PE as in Physical education as filler as part of a 4 year BS.

I'm not a modelling guru but I've delved a little into current and weather modelling and it's not simple stuff. The inputs would vary depending on the weather conditions and weather predictions change significantly over that time. The best you could hope for would by a dynamic model that updated daily and became less reliable the further away from now that you went.
Having a model that predicted where the spill was headed after the spill occured so you could direct clean up to the most effective places on

either way, your liability is low because you are modeling for something that is "never supposed to happen" and even if it does it is easy to blame some condition that could not have conceivably been taken into account by your model

Isnt BP british, and now another one is going under the radar and getting deals to drill right away....come on people, what is it going to take, that the US invade the brits before they learn their lessons. Seriously, this is about as stupid as one can get, throw more money at the problem no matter how bad it ends up in the end.....f*ckin greedy bastards!

Take some of the US army send them over to the brit ilses, and force their way into the Queens chambers, and say,"there we do not care for your laws either

In Chevron’s North Sea drill, the oil firm said the spill modelling software usually crashed when left to run for long periods of time, adding that this was typical of standard industry systems.

If your software crashes when run for long periods, the root cause is almost always one of the following:

Memory Leaks

Boundary Overflow/Underflow (of either buffers or types)

Race Conditions

None of these should be present in the "standard industry systems" of multi-billion (trillion?) dollar industries, especially if they pertain the safety systems. Memory leaks and boundary overflow/underflow are trivial to avoid by any programmer who takes the time to code defensively. Race conditions can be a bit harder to detect and avoid, but they are a less common issue, and handling them is well within the expectations of even a newly-graduated programmer.

There are also more esoteric error conditions. For example, in locations which are higher above sea-level, the "average neutron flux density" (i.e. number of cosmic rays hitting your chips) is higher, and thus the incidence of random transient faults in electronics is higher. It is not unheard of in large computer clusters to have the occasional bit-flip error in RAM due to a random cosmic ray. At the same time, these systems have built-in checkpointing, and when for whatever reason the running software develops a fault, the entire system can roll back to the last known good checkpoint, and restart.

Serious customers would never accept a system or simulator which exhibited the sorts of problems these "industry standard systems" seem to be plagued with. More to the point, I have worked indirectly with some petroleum companies on simulation software, and know for a fact the acceptable "unrecoverable error rate" was written into the contract in a very forceful way. Then again, the simulation software was being used to locate oil, so I guess that says something about the industries priorities. (And it was designed to run on a "real" cluster)

I have seen a LOT of brittle HPC code. It may have little or no input error checking.. It could also be that someone decided that if -O3 speeds it up, -O6 will be even better. Of course, any -O level above 3 (and sometimes -O3 as well) may sacrifice correctness in some cases for more speed. Sometimes compiling -O6 yields impressive speedups, sometimes it fails validation.

It's fairly common for modeling software to be written by specialists in the field who took a few semesters of FORTRAN rather than by prog